In many cases, probably. In other cases, probably not. The fear is that drone strikes lower the bar for how certain you have to be that "action" will have better results, because the practical risks have been substantially lowered. If the bar is lowered, then we may be choosing the "no action" a lot less even if it was warranted.
Certainly. I agree 100%. They lower the bar, and that increases their frequency. No question about that. However, you can say the same about literally any military technology. Bulletproof vests have the same effect. The question at hand is: is this lowered bar leading us to make bad judgments?
I see people pointing at cases where civilians were killed and saying "See! Its bad!". But that isn't an argument that it was a bad judgment. Collateral damage is, unfortunately, inevitable with the technology that we have. The question we have to ask is: is the amount of collateral damage we're causing worthwhile and/or could we substantially reduce collateral damage without harming our objectives. And i've basically never seen anyone even attempt to make that case.
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Perhaps the inclusion of the absolutist "every drone strike... ever".
But this raises a valid concern. Is drone striking weddings really winning the hearts and minds of people, or is it just setting up the next generation of (IMO, justified) hate toward the US? [0] [1]
Adults are expected to understand the potential consequences of their actions. If you knowingly fire missiles into a populated area, you don't get to say "oops, I didn't mean to" when you accidentally kill a few dozen innocent civilians.
It absolutely matters. Intending to kill civilians and killing them accidentally are very, very different things.
> Adults are expected to understand the potential consequences of their actions. If you knowingly fire missiles into a populated area, you don't get to say "oops, I didn't mean to" when you accidentally kill a few dozen innocent civilians.
Are you alleging that they didn't understand the risks involved? Or are you alleging that they did understand the risks involved, and made a conscious decision that those risks were worth it? If the latter, do you have reason to believe that their calculation was wrong?
If you're merely incompetent to use the tools available to you appropriately (instead of maliciously misusing them), I can see why people don't want to give you sharper ones anyways.
So this has now become a "We've always been at war with Islam!"? Is that kind of 1984esque discourse really helpful?
For some proper context, I really suggest reading this CS Monitor piece from back in 2001 [0].
Keen observers will quickly realize that pretty much everything written there has become reality over these past 17 years. It should also be noted that there's a certain irony to it when the "Christian Science Monitor" is peeved about your religious rhetoric being a bit too much on the extreme end.
This is something that seemingly passed by many US Americans like it never happened. But you can't declare yourself a "Christian nation" going on "crusades", hinging large parts of your popularity drive on this imagined "clash of the cultures", and then act all surprised and outraged when the opposite side also reacts with more radicalization.
Just looking at the trends for global terrorism for these past 2 decades [1], there's a very clear picture to be found there. Before 2002 countries like India, Colombia and Algeria topped the "terrorism charts".
But by 2003, as a response to the "War on Terror" started by the US, you already see Iraq and Afghanistan making their way up the list, steadily increasing in the number of attacks and fatalities until in 2005 they take the top.
Since then there's been little change, only Pakistan making their way up there some years, one might wonder why? [2]
But all three of these countries represent massive outliers and make up the vast majority of "Islamic terrorism", what do they all have in common?
9/11 was bad, no debate there. But the US's reaction to 9/11 was worse, it perfectly played into Osamas original intentions of starting a "culture clash", stigmatizing even moderate Islam in the Western world, making frustrated and discriminated moderates more likely to join his cause.
In that context, the US pretty much kicked a hornet's nest down the street and still keeps kicking it to this day. Yet many US Americans keep wondering where the angry hornets are coming from and "why they hate us so much".
> This is something that seemingly passed by many US Americans like it never happened. But you can't declare yourself a "Christian nation" going on "crusades", hinging large parts of your popularity drive on this imagined "clash of the cultures", and then act all surprised and outraged when the opposite side also reacts with more radicalization.
Hm? Which crusades are those?
> Just looking at the trends for global terrorism for these past 2 decades [1], there's a very clear picture to be found there. Before 2002 countries like India, Colombia and Algeria topped the "terrorism charts".
You mean countries that had civil wars going on in them? That seems practically tautological.
> But by 2003, as a response to the "War on Terror" started by the US, you already see Iraq and Afghanistan making their way up the list, steadily increasing in the number of attacks and fatalities until in 2005 they take the top.
You mean that terrorist attacks increased in places when they had foreign military bases in their country to target? What is that evidence of, exactly?
> But all three of these countries represent massive outliers and make up the vast majority of "Islamic terrorism", what do they all have in common?
Fundamentalist Islam and low economic development.
The Christian Science Monitor, while founded by the founder of the Church of Christ does not really represent the Church or push its doctrines. It has historically been one of the least ideological and most objective news outlets for a couple of generations.
So there may be irony in the name, but not in their practices.
What you are measuring is merely the state of chaos of the middle east post iraq war and arab spring.
If you look at the history of terrorism in Europe for instance, before the 70s it was mostly independentist mvts / de-colonisation related. 70s to early 80s was mostly far left terror attacks. Mid 80s state sponsored terrorism (Libya, Iran). 90s to now, islamist terrorism.
Islamists were blowing bombs in the metro in Paris in the 90s, and tried a 9/11 style plane attack on Paris in 1994 [1].
Islamism is a worldwide phenomenon, like communism in its time. If you go through every single muslim country from Marocco to Indonesia, the largest or second largest political party is an islamist party, or the islamists are in power, or they have been outlawed after taking too much power, or they are one of the major party to a civil war. Terrorism is a side effect of this rise in islamism, like the red brigades, RAF, etc were to communism.
So no, it’s not just a reaction to the war in Iraq.
Most statements that attempt to characterize every single instance of a phenomenon are heavily flawed, regardless of what they say. Especially in complex systems, such as those involving humans.
It seems to me that your question is coming at this from the wrong angle.
Now we are getting into indefinable moral calculus. If drone strikes have a net positive impact, are they justified? If you are in a train about to run over three people but can change the direction to run over one, do you do it?
No. But we've elected and appointed people who's job it is to:
a) be aware of all the information relevant to each operation
b) make a judgment as to whether each individual operation is worthwhile
Now, i'm not saying that makes them infallible. It certainly doesn't. There's a long history of people in such positions making poor choices. But if you're implying that they are, i'd like to see some evidence. Because what I see is a lot of "civilians died, therefore it was bad", but very little consideration of the objective of the mission, and whether or not the possibility of collateral damage was justified. What we do know is that smart people in positions of power believed that it was, and i'm happy to second-guess those beliefs if given good reason, but thus far i've never seen anyone give good reason in the case of these drone strikes.
“over the past 15 years. Increased US efforts are correlated with a worsening of the overall terror situation. Statistical modeling indicates for every additional billion dollars spent and 1,000 American troops sent to fight the war on terror, the number of terror attacks worldwide increased by 19 (data available from the author). Furthermore, the model finds up to 80 percent of the variation in the number of worldwide terror attacks since 9/11 can be explained by just those two variables—US money spent and military members sent to fight the war on terror. The data for both money spent and troops deployed come from the Congressional Research Service publication, The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11 by Amy Belasco. The number of terror attacks is from the Global Terrorism Database, hosted by the University of Maryland.”
“The data show countries the US invaded had 143 more terror attacks per year than countries the US did not invade. Similarly, countries in which the US conducted drone strikes were home to 395 more terror attacks per year than those where the US did not.”
Both of these are troubling to me from a legal perspective, it concerns me that these citizen's due process rights were waived, particularly in secret, with secret justifications.
It does not trouble me at all from a moral position that these individual were targeted and killed, however. If they were not US citizens, i'd consider this an excellent example of a great use of drones. Do you disagree and if so why?
The first one, because he was a young boy. The second, because the president using his sole authority to order the assassination of someone shouldn't happen.
Regardless, not taking action at that time would likely have been better. They were US citizens, their rights were abrogated and they were killed illegally.
I mean, yeah? I know there have been cases where drone strikes were justified, but it really only takes one instance of "We think there's some terrorists at this wedding, so let's fire a fragmentation missile into the middle of it, and then another one a few minutes later to make sure we kill the paramedics and firemen too" to decide that the US military is not responsible enough to be allowed to make these decisions.
Edit: Actually I'll go further than that. You lose all moral authority to wage war the moment you start deliberately targeting civilian medics, and that's standard policy with US drone strikes. See "double-tap."
> I mean, yeah? I know there have been cases where drone strikes were justified, but it really only takes one instance of "We think there's some terrorists at this wedding, so let's fire a fragmentation missile into the middle of it, and then another one a few minutes later to make sure we kill the paramedics and firemen too" to decide that the US military is not responsible enough to be allowed to make these decisions.
You think their policy is designed to kill civilian medics? Or do you think the policy was designed to kill other terrorists who come by to try to save their brothers?
It's designed to kill anyone who comes to the aid of the injured. In any built-up area, that will obviously include ambulance personnel; there's no way the policy-makers do not know this. So, yes, it is absolutely designed to kill civilian medics and concerned neighbors/bystanders, and has done so over and over. See also:
Was it being done in built-up areas? I see the word 'rescuer' being used in these articles. But I notably do not see the word 'civilian'. A terrorist who tries to save the lives of his terrorist buddies is still a 'rescuer', and that's exactly who these drone strikes ought to be targeting.
The term "village" is used repeatedly. If you think that--when there's an explosion in a village--it's reasonable to assume that the only people who rush to assist are terrorists, then you need to provide proof of that, not ask me to prove the opposite. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
The US in WW2 and Vietnam used binoculars and radio to make decisions on general areas that should be Napalm firebombed because that happened to be the most accurate technology available for sensing, communicating, and striking. We've come a long way - but why assume the current state of things is the ideal toolset to stop at? If you're upset at the status quo, why preserve it?
Also, unfortunately other technologically advanced powers exist. Regardless of the desire for pacifist isolationism, Russia and China will continue to work on military technology, and it only takes a few decades of complacency to fall far behind.